Monthly Archives: March 2017

So Mass Effect Andromeda has just come out for PC and consoles, and the female characters have been deliberately made to look “uglier” than the models they were inspired by, while the male characters are dead ringers for their model motion capture actors, and still as hunky as hell. In the annals of game industry mistakes this one is just flat out bizarre; not only out of touch with the bottom line, but out of touch with what real gamers (male AND female) would prefer. Mass Effect games have always featured customization tools which would allow a player to modify a character’s appearance and make them as ugly as they like; but now that ugly appearance is mandatory- unless of course you play the male character who is still dashing.

This strikes me as backwardly sexist against women; ugly protagonists in adventure stories (especially high fantasy and science fiction) are generally not what people want to see to begin with- so forcing female characters to be uglier than most REAL young women you might see in the world is a very poor choice. On top of this the game has emotionless expressions and facial animation that looks 15 years old. Is this is what happens when a game studio hires highly political writers who have never worked in the industry?